Applications Open for Scaling Up Nutrition Business Network (SBN) Regional Pitch Competition!

Are you a nutrition sensitive SME in Malawi, Ethiopia or Kenya? Does your product/service/concept address a local diet quality gap and increase the consumption of safe and nutritious foods? If yes, then apply and stand the chance win a trip to Nairobi to compete in the Scaling Up Nutrition Pitch Competition (Africa Edition)!

The Scaling Up Nutrition Business Network (SBN) in collaboration with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) has organized the first edition of the Scaling Up Nutrition Pitch Competition. The SUN Pitch Competition will be held during the Nutrition Africa Investor Forum (NAIF) in Kenya on the 16th of October 2018.

Objectives

The objective of the SUN Pitch Competition is to:

Build a pipeline of quality ‘nutrition investments’ with a focus on SMEs that can respond to pressing local nutrition priorities and improve access to nutritious and safe foods for low consumers.

To scale innovative nutrition investments and showcase sustainable market based solutions that address nutrition issues which can be adopted and scaled up regionally.

With the generous support of partners a serious of initiatives will be organized to select SMEs from Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and Nigeria to compete at the SUN Pitch Competition. For this particular application process, SBN in partnership with BoPinc will select the cohort of SMEs from Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi that will participate in the SUN Pitch Competition.

Eligibility Criteria

The applicant is a citizen of Malawi, Ethiopia or Kenya.

The applicant has a fully registered start-up or growth stage Small and Medium Sized Enterprise (SME) with annual revenues of up to USD 1 000 000 and whose products and/or services promote nutrition and food safety in Malawi, Ethiopia or Kenya.

The applicant is a for profit company including association and cooperatives if they are functioning as businesses.

Be available to participate for the pitch training boot camp from mid -September to mid- October (dates to be communicated soon). All applicants are expected to be fluent in spoken English.

Business must comply with SBN principles for business engagement and by the UN Business Sector Guidelines. Priority will only be given to businesses whose operations abide by these guidelines.

Commercial Viability: The business model is economically viable. The ability of the investment opportunity to provide adequate returns to potential investors. High growth market opportunity and high barriers to entry. The ability of the management team to deliver value to investors.

Scale: The magnitude of impact on vulnerable population target groups

Innovation: Proposed investment opportunity is introducing or scaling accessible and disruptive innovations that address and identified diet quality gap/need in the market.